Why do so many organizations struggle to put in place mature Agile teams that can apply proper Agile principles and deliver awesome products? Some people will say, “Agile is hard” as an excuse to not do Agile or to become frAgile. Well we think we have developed the “Secret Sauce” to rebooting any Agile team that just doesn’t seem to be maturing and we want to share it with you!

If you are thinking of scaling Agile across a large organization, then this talk is a must to attend to help ensure your teams have the right foundation. Organizations wanting to scale Agile must have a solid foundation of mature Agile teams who embrace the Agile values and have the right Agile mindset.

Over the years, as we have done Agile transformations in different organizations, we have seen common patterns that keep repeating. The most common pattern we found in our experience is that teams are frAgile. Too many either pretend to be Agile or don’t even know Agile is not a methodology, so organizations question the value of using Agile. Very often the confusion and frustration that comes with thinking that a team is Agile when they are not Agile, brings people right back to their old habits of command and control. Creating successful mature Agile teams is not sorcery, you need to discover the secret sauce!

In this talk, we will reveal our secrets on how to create a successful Agile-Scrum team in 5 sprints. Attendees will learn how we applied our secret sauce as we experimented with more than 30 teams and we refined the know-how. This recipe has proven to be successful in different organizations and teams delivering different types of products. Our Creative-Destruction approach goes through a human change process we labeled The Intervention Plan. The 5 steps are:

• Step 1: Run in the rain
• Step 2: Thunderstruck
• Step 3: Cry over the M&M’s machine
• Step 4: Open-up and look at the sun
• Step 5: Removing the training wheels

And by using these 5 steps, attendees will discover the 5th Agile value!

The stereotype of technical professionals as inarticulate, socially inept geniuses inventing problems to solve is unkind and inaccurate. Yet the Dilbert image persists. So do jokes like the one about the engineer sentenced to death on the guillotine, who watches the instrument of death malfunction, then tells the operators how to fix it.

Why do people make fun of engineers and those with their mindset? Do people wired and trained to analyze and solve problems and focus on the mechanics of a situation frustrate those whose brains are wired differently? And how does the engineer’s way of dealing with individuals and interactions - that first value of the Agile Manifesto - sometimes get in the way of team collaboration and productivity?

In this interactive session, we'll show a little empathy for engineers and other analytical folk whose neurological wiring makes them seem different from the rest of humanity. We'll also explore how those with the engineering mindset can develop their own empathy and consciously adopt behaviours that amplify their value to their teams and organizations, make them more effective leaders - and make their own lives easier by positioning themselves for understanding.

Join Sue in a lively exploration of what can happen when engineers and technical professionals shift their mindset from solving problems to creating impact.
You will leave this session with an appreciation of:

• How to make your ideas meaningful to others by taking their perspective
• How shifting your language from "What?" to "So What?" helps people connect the dots
• Why giving up the need to be smart may be the smartest thing you ever do
• Techniques you can use to take someone else's perspective.

Agile is alive and well in the technical sphere, but why should we stop there?  At the root of it teams from every discipline are simply a group of people working together to reach their goals. Their subject matter is unique but the challenges are not.  We are all normal.

Rob Villeneuve is a software developer turned CEO, and who used Agile to empower a team of 50+ at rebel.com.  This first hand account will share the transition story of rebel.com from a few agile teams into an Agile Organization.  We will explore the rewards of thinking agile at every level, from leadership to the front line, and Rob will share experiences from each department at Rebel embarking on their own Agile journey.  If you wish others in your organization would simply try agile, or would improve their understanding of why you agile, then you may have something to learn from the cross-training experiences of introducing agile to non-technical teams.

 Rob has introduced agile to teams of many sizes, disciplines, and experience levels including: Board of Directors, Leadership Teams, Sales, Marketing, Finance & Accounting, Customer Service/Call Centre, Software Development, Network Operations, and Architects (Building Architects).

Just as MSWord16 doesn't work on a laptop with Windows XP, some new methods of working are failing to deliver on their promises because we're trying to install them in environments that need an upgrade.

Join Sue Johnston in a lively exploration of what happens when traditional thinking gets in the way of innovation and progress towards organizational goals. We can't create positive and lasting change through action, alone. We need to change the way we - and those around us - think about our teams and our work.

You'll leave with:

• an appreciation of the role of mindset on project success

• a fresh approach to influencing others to produce good outcomes

• techniques to shift from unilateral control to collaborative learning

Come and learn how to provide the operating system for highly productive teams. Warning: There will be hard thinking about soft skills.

One the most significant ceremony of any Agile Team is Daily Standup where the team members get together and plan for their day. But quite often the daily standup turns into a zombie status update meeting where team members come together to blurt out their updates and walk away to their desk without ever maximizing the benefit of that meet up.

In this session I will share a case study of how we created a simple experiment that turned into Standup Poker and revolutionized our Daily Standup. This technique helped us uncover true insights of teams progress and got the team talking about strategic planning and plan to remove any impediments as a "team" on daily basis to accomplish their sprint goal and commitments.

We learnt that when team members started using this technique, hidden impediments and dependencies started to emerge and team members organically started to re-plan and prioritize their work to accomplish the Sprint Goal. Product Owner also found great value in this technique as this helped them see the teams true progress and engage with the team to re-prioritize user stories and even take a story out of the sprint if required. Scrum Masters started to observe a trend in the confidence level over the span of the sprint and brought that information to Sprint Retrospective to discuss and brainstorm ways to improve and keep the confidence levels high throughout the sprint. The discussions and observations due to Standup poker resulted in teams committing better and more confidently during Sprint Planning and got into the rhythm of always accomplishing their sprint goal, but more importantly they started improving everyday and got into "continuous improvement" mode.

The content, exercise and message of this session highlight the agile principles of individuals and interactions over process and tools and fostering the mindset of continuous improvement.

In this session we will share examples, stories and experiences from trying the Standup Poker and how this simple technique converted a bunch of individuals into a TEAM !!!

Agility can provide great results or increase team performance. What about its side effects? My goal is to bring attention to all sorts of side effects, which are often underestimated during and after a transition towards Agility. From conflicts to good team spirit, from employee resignation to higher employee retention, you will definitely experience both negative and positive side effects.